ParkBee raises €1.8M from InnovationQuarter and angels

Wouter de Bruijne pitched ParkBee at Ecosummit Amsterdam on 7 July 2016 and explained why sharing commercial parking assets is a smart green business idea. Today, Wouter and the Co-founders Jian Jiang and Tom Buchmann celebrate having raised €1.8M from InnovationQuarter, the regional development agency for West Holland, and 4 undisclosed angel investors. The Dutch startup makes unused private parking garages, mainly office building car parks, available to the public. This makes sense as cars are parking most of the time and everybody knows how difficult it is to find parking in crowded city centres, especially when you are in a hurry to your next business meeting or running multiple private errands on a busy day. ParkBee is integrated in the Dutch parking apps Parkmobile, which is majority owned by BMW since 2015, and Park-line rather than trying to build their own consumer brand.

The new growth capital will be used to further develop the product and add a lot of parking garages to the network in the Netherlands and the new target market UK. Since its launch in October 2015, ParkBee has experienced good traction in the Netherlands: 34 company car parks with a total of 1.800 parking spaces have signed up to its smart access solution. The startup recently opened an office in London, the first stop on their internationalisation tour. “ParkBee’s technology makes it simple to operate in other countries and can be easily integrated. We have a good network in the property sector that provides us with parking spaces. Our growth in the Netherlands has shown what we can achieve,” explains CEO Tom Buchmann.

By opening up unused company parking capacity, ParkBee generates a new source of income for property owners. At the same time, car drivers may pay less compared to commercial car parks while saving time when looking for a parking space. Municipalities also benefit as useless parking traffic is avoided. ParkBee was incubated at YesDelft and accelerated by Climate-KIC. Given their close partnership today, it would not be a surprise if Parkmobile eventually acquired ParkBee.